What Happened To Jesus - Jesus Made Sin

 For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the  righteousness of God in him (2 corinthians 5;21)

The method used to redeem the human race was the same as was used to corrupt it. It was the "the one man" method. II Corinthians 5:19 says, "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself..." God was in Christ undoing all that had been done to man through Adam. In order to undo all this, Jesus had to first be made all that we were through Adam. He became all we were and destroyed it all when He was raised again.

The first step in Christ's becoming what we were was that He was made to be our sin. The Greek construction of our text reads: "He who knew no sin God hath made to be sin for us..." The point I want to make is that Christ's sinlessness pertains only to His earth walk, His having been born of a virgin. This Christ who had never previously known sin at all was none the less literally made to be sin itself. You see, there are many who maintain that this verse doesn't mean that Christ literally was made sin because it says He "knew no sin;" He simply was reckoned to be sin - He had sin imputed to Him." Well, the Greek construction helps refute that.

Was Christ literally made to be sin? That is, did He become sin in His spirit? Isaiah 53:6,12; Hebrews 9:28; and I Peter 2:24 all declare that Jesus bore our sins. But Paul goes further than any other Bible writer in our text, saying that Christ was made to be sin - The Good News Bible says, "God made him share our sin..." The Jerusalem Bible says, "God made the sinless one into sin..." The New English Bible says, "God made him one with the sinfulness of men..."

If we know He was made our sin, and we do, all we have to do is ask ourselves, "Where was sin located in us?" In order to locate where sin was in Christ. Romans 7:5,20,23 says sin was in our bodily members; Ephesians 2:3 says it was in our minds. But we also know sin was in our spirits; Jer. 3:17; 4:14,18; 7:24; 17:9,10; 18:12 all speak of evil in the unregenerate human heart (or spirit.) Jesus said the heart (or spirit) was the fountain from which evil actions in the sinner spring in Mark 7:21,22 and Luke 6:45. Paul speaks of the lusts of men's hearts in Romans 1:24. Sin affected man in spirit, mind, and body. If Jesus was made your and my sin, then He was made sin in spirit because that is where our sin was.

In our text His being made sin and our being made righteous are paralleled. In whatever sense He was made sin, that's the sense we are made righteous. In other words, if He weren't literally made sin, we aren't literally made righteous; if He weren't made sin in spirit, we aren't made righteous in spirit; if He only had sin reckoned to Him, we only have righteousness reckoned to us. But we know we have literally been made righteous in Christ - the righteousness of God. Now, God doesn't have righteousness just reckoned to Him - He is righteous. And we have been made that righteousness. God is not an essentially sinful or evil being who has a "righteous" tag stuck on Him, and neither are we still sinners in nature with a "righteous" tag stuck on us. Righteousness has not been just imputed to us, it has been imparted to us. We have been made righteous with the righteousness of God. His own kind of righteousness. Ephesians 4:24 says the new man we have been made in Christ was created in righteousness, "true" righteousness, real righteousness. Acts 15:9 says God purified our hearts by faith in Christ. If our spirit's were not made righteous, then we could never go to heaven, at least that's what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God."

Well, if we are literally made righteous, Jesus was literally made sin. If we are made righteous in spirit, He was made sin in spirit, because He was made sin so that we might be made righteous. If sin were only in the physical nature of man, everybody would go to Heaven the moment they died.

Christ's being made sin was actually the starting point that set the great wheels of reconciliation into motion. He identified Himself with us in becoming a man, it is true, but He wasn't fully identified with us, He didn't fully become the same kind of man as we were until the moment He was made sin. This is the real starting point, the entrance into all the rest that happened to Him. How we view this will affect how we view all the rest of what happened. Those who deny that He was really made sin have a different view of all the rest that we will study of what happened to Him until He sat down.

Jesus was made just as much sin as we were sin that we might be made just as much righteous as He is righteous. No other righteousness would satisfy God or the need of man, enable man to fully enter God's presence or make him fit for heaven. I John 3:7 says we are righteous even as He is righteous. Maybe it has been a failure to see Him literally made sin that has hindered us from seeing that we are literally made righteous.

Jesus was so literally made sin in spirit that He himself had to be made righteous again in spirit before He was raised again from the dead. I Timothy 3:16 - "God was manifest in the flesh, justified (same as made righteous) in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." When was Jesus made righteous? Certainly not in His earth walk, because He knew no sin and didn't need to be made righteous. You couldn't make someone righteous who was already perfectly righteous. He was made righteous sometime after He was made sin, and this was "in the spirit," after He had left His body (His flesh) and before He was raised again and "believed on in the world," referring to His post-resurrection appearances. Sin did the same thing to Jesus that it did to Adam and us - it killed Him spiritually. He was cut off from the Father. Sin always brings death - Romans 5:12; 6:23- Sin brought death to the spirit of the Son of God. The whole dreadful process of Him becoming all that we were continued as a matter of course. He was made sin. "Why?" So He could wipe out your sin and all it produced. So He could satisfy justice.
 

In Christ,
Gary L. Garner

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